Saturday, 28 February 2015

You can back Labour’s candidate, a business advisor with no connection to Aberavon.

“I’m delighted that the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidate is standing in Aberavon.”﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿

“How can somebody like him (Stephen Kinnock) understand ordinary people in a place like Port Talbot?”

These were some of the comments Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) supporters received campaigning in Port Talbot today.

The Choice in Aberavon

Even a number of long-standing Labour Party supporters said that they would support TUSC candidate, Owen Herbert because they were so annoyed that Stephen Kinnock had, they felt, secured the candidacy purely on the basis of his family name.

TUSC candidate Owen Herbert has the sort of credentials, as a local trade unionist (Owen is branch secretary of the Swansea RMT branch), that they would once have expected of a Labour candidate in a working class constituency like Aberavon

We had offers of help in the campaign - people who’ll share the news that there is a local working class, trade unionist and socialist that you can vote for, people willing to put up posters and leaflet or canvass for Owen.﻿﻿

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Owen Herbert

There is a working class, socialist alternative for voters in Aberavon. Owen, like all TUSC representatives, pledges:

﻿﻿﻿ To vote against and fight cuts and austerity

To support all workers and trade unionists fighting to defend their jobs, wages and services they provide. We demand the freeing of trade unions to defend working people.

To fight for essential services, like transport and power to be taken into common ownership so that they can be planned for our benefit not to line the pockets of rich shareholders.

Tuesday, 24 February 2015

This Saturday (28 February), the Trades Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) take the General Election 2015 fight to Port Talbot.

We'll be in the Aberafan shopping centre from 11.30am, highlighting the difference between TUSC and the political establishment.

Our candidate for Aberavon is Owen Herbert. Owen is a representative of one of the most militant trade unions in recent years, the RMT. His union is the first to officially back TUSC, having played a leading role in founding TUSC as an alternative to the cuts-consensus of the political establishment.

TUSC stands trade unionists, workers, campaigners against cuts on a platform of basic trade union solidarity. Above all TUSC candidates pledge to vote against and fight all cuts to jobs and services in our communities.

TUSC represents a decisive, working class, break with the political establishment. And you don't get more establishment than Labour's representative for Aberavon, Stephen Kinnock. He was born into the political elite as the son of two former Labour Party politicians – a party leader, later Euro Commissioner and a Euro MP, now Baroness. Now married to the prime minister of Denmark, Kinnock Junior is among the leading ranks of Labour 'princes' sons of Labour politicians, who seem to see a career in the Party as a birth right.

Former and even current Labour voters disillusioned by the lack of working class representation and fed up of representatives making and promising Tory cuts, should get behind Owen, a working class trade unionist, standing on the sort of platform that probably attracted them to Labour in the past.

TUSC representatives pledge:

·To vote against and fight cuts and austerity

·To support all workers and trade unionists fighting to defend their jobs, wages and services they provide. We demand the freeing of trade unions to defend working people.

·To fight for essential services, like transport and power to be taken into common ownership so that they can be planned for our benefit not to line the pockets of rich shareholders.

Come along to Aberafan Shopping Centre, 11.30am, Saturday (28 Feb) to find out more about TUSC.

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A candidate to be the next MP for Llanelli has pledged that if elected he will only take the average wage of Llanelli constituents. The announcement comes in the wake of public outcry at revelations of "cash for access" involving senior politicians.

As another financial scandal engulfs the Houses of Parliament with serious allegations made against senior MPs from both the Conservatives and Labour Party, one MP hopeful has pledged to make a clean break with what he calls the "parliamentary gravy train".

Scott Jones,Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition(TUSC) candidate for Llanelli, said: "Working-class people are rightly disgusted by the news emerging about senior Tory and Labour MPs yet again offering their services to the highest bidders.

"What is incredible is that the Tory Malcolm Rifkind actually said that MPs are low-paid on more than £60,000 a year. Try telling that to care workers struggling on minimum wage zero-hours contracts!

"Meanwhile, New Labour's Tony Blair has taken time out from his round-the-world junkets with assorted dictators to outrageously try to defend his fellow war criminal Jack Straw. Once again, the very people responsible for destroying the last vestiges of socialism within the Labour Party have demonstrated their outstanding ability to enrich themselves off the backs of the working people who put them into their positions of power.

"This scandal highlights the increasingly identical nature of the four main parties whose politicians all have their snouts in the trough on the parliamentary gravy train as well all backing continued cuts, privatisation and capitalist austerity policies. No wonder just 16% in recent opinion polls trust politicians to tell the truth, who are amazingly even less trusted than bankers!

"I'm standing to be a voice for ordinary people, not to enrich myself. I restate my commitment now that if I'm elected as a TUSC candidate I will only take the average full-time wage of Llanelli residents, which is currently around £23,000 a year, approximately one third of the current wage for an MP. Any money on top of this will be put towards a solidarity fund to support grassroots community and workers' campaigns.

"There's only one group of people who will pull my strings – the ordinary working-class residents of Llanelli who deserve a representative in Parliament who will stand up and fight for their interests, not just the interests of those with the biggest pockets."

Scott Jones is a 26 year old retail worker and is a local branch secretary of the shop workers unionUSDAW.

Tuesday, 17 February 2015

Over the last 2 weeks Scott Jones, TUSC candidate in Llanelli, has been contacted by dozens of people in the Llanelli constituency asking 'What will you do to crack down on tax dodging?' Thank you to all those who have got in touch, below is content of Scott's reply:

The Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition recognises how big an issue this is. If the tax avoided and evaded every year in Britain were collected, then cuts to public services would be unnecessary and austerity a thing of the past.

I believe that recent media revelations show that the private banking service offered to HSBC's Swiss account holders is more akin to an advisor to a mafia don than to a traditional financial advisor. The leak shows that HSBC's Swiss bank helped clients conceal black accounts and dodge taxes all over the world.

Although these revelations are being made public now, the information was leaked in 2007 and made available to governments in 2010. Of the 7,000 UK citizens on the list, only one has been prosecuted in five years.

Many countries started criminal investigations against HSBC last year - but the UK government shows no sign of action against the London-based bank. That may be due to the role played in the Tory Party by HSBC boss at the time - Stephen Green. Green was made a Conservative peer and minister of trade and investment eight months after the allegations were known by the government.

Labour has called for a public inquiry. But with Tristram Hunt, the shadow education minister, declaring that Labour is "furiously, passionately, aggressively pro-business", there is little chance that it would do anything to curb these excesses.

As for TUSC, firstly, I would support the campaign to introduce the tax dodging bill currently being promoted. Secondly, I would reverse the cuts to frontline HMRC staffing made by Labour, Tory and LibDems Governments in the last 15 years and support the PCS union in fighting cuts. We need more frontline staff to catch these tax dodging parasites. Thirdly, I would ensure that those who steal millions from our public services in tax fraud receive at least the same treatment as those who are currently prosecuted for benefit fraud. Overall I would focus on prosecuting the super-rich for tax dodging rather than poor families struggling to cope in our inequality, poverty ridden society. Fourthly, I would campaign for the public ownership of all banks in the UK. The wealth, resources and any socially useful financial expertise these institutions have should be used to support job creation and public services. We don't need rich bankers helping their super-rich pals to get even richer at our expense.

These billions held by HSBC in Switzerland, and all of the money held in other tax-havens around the globe, should be invested productively to provide jobs, services and a better quality of life for ordinary people.

Monday, 16 February 2015

Today is the start of TUC Fair Pay Fortnight. The TUC has produced figures to show that the much-trumpeted recovery has not halted the continual decline in real wages.

The TUC estimates that real wages have fallen by over £2,200 for the average worker, since the Tories came to power. They also point out that the relentless attack on our wages has led to a loss of tax revenue to the Government of at least £33 billion. That's more than the planned £30bn of cuts that Tories, Liberal Democrats and LABOUR all voted should be made on the next Parliament, whoever wins the election.

Here, in Wales, wages fell in average by a further £300 last year.

Miliband, at Welsh Labour Conference, in Swansea this last weekend, spoke about Labour's pledge to increase wages. The Mirror today hailed this as a "hike in wages" but look at the detail. Labour is promising £8 an hour by 2020. That's just 15p more than the Current Living Wage outside London. It's already less than the London Living Wage; by 2020 it will be less than the Living Wage - what we're told we need to get by on - for all of us.

Even the Living Wage only provides enough to get by on when supplemented by working benefits in many cases. That's why the Bakers Union, BFAWU demanded and won TUC backing for £10/hour - the real minimum needed for workers. Unlike Labour, TUSC backs official TUC policy and demands £10/hour now.

In any case, Labour's claims to want to address the issue of falling wages can't be taken seriously while they remain committed to maintaining the Con-Dems' public spending cuts, including the cap public sector wage increases.

TUSC supports all workers taking action to halt the decline in their living standards, something else Labour has repeatedly failed to do.

Use Fair Pay Fortnight to highlight the issue of low pay. Support the BFAWU/Youth Fight For Jobs/Hungry for Justice campaign for £10 Now!Build TUSC as a political alternative, fighting to reverse the decline in workers' real wages.

Sunday, 15 February 2015

Welsh Labour councillors and Assembly Members have taken a couple of days off from making devastating cuts to jobs and services this weekend for the pre-election rally that is Welsh Labour Conference.

Up until this weekend the pace of cuts announcements has been relentless; on the eve of Conference news came out that Cardiff's Labour-led council will shed nearly 600 jobs.

One area among many devastated by Welsh Labour cuts is education. Conference is being held in Swansea, home to a majority Labour council which is proposing to slash £24 million, 15% of the current budget, from education and schools, over the next 3 years.

Welsh Labour still claims to be protecting education but when Swansea primary heads were asked what cuts of this scale would mean they painted a picture of job losses for teachers and other education workers. They predict that it will be impossible to meet the statutory requirement to teach 5-7 year olds in maximum class sizes of 30 and that older primary pupils will be taught, in a number of cases in classes of 42+.

Cuts to their members' jobs didn't stop NUT Cymru tweeting pictures of Welsh Labour politicians from its stall inside the Conference. Welsh trade unions continue their unrequited love for Welsh Labour despite Labour's ongoing willingness to implement Con-Dem cuts. But their membership will not tolerate this for ever; already many trade unionists are turning their backs in Labour - 4 members of the NUT NEC will stand under the TUSC banner in May.

The Welsh Government is as guilty of vandalising education as Welsh councils. Further education colleges are reeling from cuts to various funding streams which will mean some colleges losing well over 10% of their funding. A 50% reduction in funds for and volumes of, post 19 education is a massive blow not only to workers in further education but to the communities they serve.

Once Miliband and the rest return to Westminster, normal service will be resumed as far as Welsh Labour making Tory cuts is concerned. Over the next few weeks, Labour councillors will vote on £millions of cuts to jobs and services in annual budget-seeing meetings. Miliband is promising to continue with austerity but anybody who doubts he means it should take a look at Wales, where Welsh Labour has been a conveyor belt for Tory cuts.

Trade unionists, socialists and people whose services are under threat will oppose the cuts proposals of councils and the Senedd and more and more will draw the conclusion we need a political alternative.

TUSC Wales already has an impressive list of trade unionist candidates for the General Election but there's still time for others frustrated by the cuts-consensus to join with us to ensure as many people in Wales as possible get the opportunity to vote for a real no-cuts alternative.

Wednesday, 11 February 2015

The news this morning is full of Labour Education spokesman, Tristram 'aggressively pro-business' Hunt's pledge that Labour will cap infant class sizes at a maximum of 30.

In Wales there is already a statutory requirement for 5-7 year-olds to be taught in maximum class size of 30.

But this is made meaningless by the Labour Welsh Government and Labour councils passing on Con-Dem cuts.

Swansea primary heads were asked to respond to the draft budget proposals in education, agreed by our Labour Council Cabinet on Tuesday. To a woman and man they stated that the level of cuts proposed, £24 million or 15% of the current budget, over the next 3 years, would mean that they would be unable to meet this statutory obligation.

They went further, with several heads predicting, due to numbers of teaching and other jobs that would be lost if these cuts are made, those pupils not covered by this obligation, 8-11 year olds, would end up being taught in classes of 42+!

Words are one thing but as long as Labour remains committed to austerity that's all they'll remain, hollow, windy, meaningless words.

Swansea TUSC joined trade unionists and worried service users on a lobby of the Council Cabinet meeting which agreed to recommend these cuts to the full Council.

We will be demanding that so-called 'left' Labour councillors vote against these devastating proposals on February 24. Come along and add your voice to those demanding elected representatives stop making Con-Dem cuts and fight instead. Help us to build TUSC as an alternative to the cuts-consensus.

Campaigners had joined the protest lobby of the last Council meeting organised by Cardiff Against The Cuts (in the snow!) and rallied outside Central Library last weekend in demonstrations that told councillors emphatically that if they pressed ahead they'd be punished by their constituents.

Unison, which represents library workers, and campaigners are over the moon, but they're not laying down their banners yet. Although Cardiff Council says they won't cut off funding in April as planned, they are going to use the year to try to find "partners" to take over the facilities - in other words, they're going to come back for them next year if they think they'll be able to get away with it.

What's more, there is still a long list of facilities and services threatened with the axe, including Central library itself, the parks, the drug and alcohol counselling service, playcentres, youth clubs like Howardian Youth Music Centre, day centres for the elderly and much more.

But everyone can gain courage from the clear proof that campaigning works! Let's build the protest on budget day and chalk up another win for our side. Forward a link to this article to all your contacts, share the Facebook event like mad and invite your friends.PROTEST: CARDIFF COUNCIL - STOP SAVAGE CUTS TO JOBS AND SERVICESMeet at 330pm, Thursday 26th February, at City Hall, Cathays Park

But you've got to wonder why we're in this mess in the first place. Why are our Councils filledwith politicians who, instead of standing up for us and for the failtieis we need, instead doingthe dirty work of the Tory-Liberal government? Time we had our own coalition ofrepresentatives, willing to stand up to big business and its representatives. Support theTrade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in this year's historic election challenge.

None of the Labour councillors in the City and County of Swansea Cabinet, which later voted on proposals to make £80 million of cuts to jobs and services, was prepared to come out and face us.

Trade unionists, school parents, workers whose jobs are at risk, joined others who value and want to fight to defend services. Swansea TUSC added our banner to those from Swansea Trades Council and Unite the Union.

Seeing as the cabinet members weren't prepared to come to the lobby, representatives of the lobby went to them. including TUSC candidate for Aberavon, Owen Herbert.

Members of the public have an opportunity at the start of the meeting to question the Cabinet. Councillors faced questions on the cuts in education and schools, including plans to sell off school playing fields. Alec Thraves, TUSC election agent in Swansea West, simply lambasted them for their lack of backbone in cravenly carrying out Tory cuts.

In 2 weeks' time, the proposals Cabinet agreed tonight will be presented to the full Council. We'll be back as part of a much bigger demonstration, including the Council's UNISON branch who are mobilising against threats of jobs losses, outsourcing and cuts.

Labour councillors may decide to make Tory cuts but trade unionists and the Swansea public will resist and not allow these cuts go unchallenged. Come to the lobby, February 24, Civic Centre, from 4pm.

We think part of that challenge must be putting forward a political alternative to Labour representatives who make Tory cuts. If you've agree join with TUSC.

Sunday, 8 February 2015

This image, via TUSC supporters in Sheffield, is too good not to share..

Tristram Hunt, the Labour Education spokesman, who crossed a UCU picket line to deliver a lecture on Marx, publicly declares what TUSC has been saying, Labour is on the wrong side as far as trade unionists and working class people are concerned.

Saturday, 7 February 2015

That’s the message Swansea TUSC will be taking to the lobby of the
Special Cabinet Meeting of the Council, Tuesday (10 February) from 4pm at the
Civic Centre.

For any Labour councillors willing to listen, the Swansea
Trades Unionist & Socialist Coalition (TUSC) street ballot today (7-2-2015)
sent a clear message: The people of Swansea want their representatives to stop
voting for Tory cuts and start fighting them.

188 people participated in our ballot. Not one of
them wanted their Labour councillors to make Tory cuts; 100% of them voted that
they want “representatives who will fight the cuts”.

Unfortunately it appears that they won’t get that
from their elected Labour representatives. Just like in the run-up to last
year’s cuts budget, not one Labour councillor has spoken out against, let alone
indicated a willingness to vote against, projected cuts of £80 million+ over the
next 3 years.

The only defence they can offer for their failure
to fight Con-Dem cuts is to claim that it is better that they make the cuts than
somebody else does. People we spoke to today were furious that all Labour
councillors are getting paid to vote for £millions of cuts to our jobs and
services.

We asked people we balloted which of the proposed
cuts that will be considered by Swansea’s Special Cabinet Meeting next week,
most concerned them and invited them to write down a message to send to Swansea
councillors.

There are a whole range of proposals that are
worrying people we spoke to and making them angry, including the outsourcing and
cuts in leisure and social services, threats to close youth centres and
Plantasia, increases in charges for a number of council services and cuts in
funding for supported organisations like West Glamorgan Youth Theatre.

Time and again though, the issue that seemed to
most anger people is the proposed cuts to education. That’s no surprise; many
had read the report in the local paper predicting that primary-age pupils could
end up being taught in classes of 40 if these cuts to funding go ahead. In fact
a number of heads of primary schools, including the one my youngest son attends,
have predicted to the Council that 15% reduction in funding being proposed over
the next 3 years could lead to classes of 42+ for some primary school pupils.

The people of Swansea have spoken today and told
their councillors that they expect them to vote against Con-Dem cuts at the
Special Budget Meeting on Tuesday and the full council meeting on February 24.
It was summed up in a message one woman wrote to councillors: “No more cuts!
We’ve had too many already!”

That’s what Swansea TUSC supporters will be
demanding when we join the lobby of the Council Special Cabinet Meeting on
Tuesday, from 4pm, Civic Centre.

Wednesday, 4 February 2015

I've been studying the papers for City & County of Swansea's Special Cabinet Meeting next Tuesday (February 10). As a parent of two school-age children, I have to say it's enough to keep you awake at night with worry.

This meeting will decide which proposals go through to the Council budget-setting meeting on February 24. The agenda, for a Labour-led Council remember, is all about parcelling out Con-Dem cuts.

For months parents, governors, pupils at my younger son's school have been opposing the proposed sell-off of school playing fields for house-building, along with residents from the local community.

We have serious concerns that the Council has barely paid lip-service to the democratic process. Reading the papers reveals that my son's school is one of 14, just in the first tranche of sell-offs of school land. Labour councillors claim this is "surplus land" but the beautifully maintained ground where my son plays, learns and evacuates to in an emergency, is a school playing field and not surplus land!

You can check this out for yourself - follow @ParklandsField on Twitter or look up the Save Parklands Field Facebook group. Watch the wonderful video, starring pupils themselves, which demonstrates why a number of Welsh sports stars are now backing the campaign to save the playing field.

How many of the other parcels of school "surplus land" are also green spaces valuable to our children's education and development?

I knew about this proposal from studying the Council's budget papers last year. Some Labour councillors who voted for the proposals obviously hadn't checked what they were voting for because they told me, when I challenged them on it, that there were no plans to sell school playing fields. The only alternative, that they did know and lied to me, would be even worse!

School playing fields are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to schools and education cuts. Up to now, the Welsh Labour Government and our Council claim to have protected education. In fact, there have been cuts in areas like 'education other than at school' and transport for faith and other schools but education has seen far fewer cuts than many other services. Now however, education will face severe cuts from the Council - £24 million in the next 3 years, 15% of the current budget.

In the papers that Cabinet members have received there's a section where head teachers identify what cuts of this scale will mean for their schools. They all predict that it will be impossible to meet the statutory requirement to teach 5-7 year olds in maximum class sizes of 30. Many schools predict class sizes of 42+ for older pupils. All of them will see job losses, which will affect teachers, classroom assistant and support staff.

The only response of the Council leadership to these concerns seems to be that schools are 'relatively protected' and other services have it worse.

If you work in education or are a parent who's worried about their children's education, join TUSC representatives on the lobby of the Council Cabinet on February 10 and the full Council on February 24 (both from 4pm at Civic Centre).

Monday, 2 February 2015

Swansea TUSC supporters will be standing with Swansea Trades Council representatives and defenders of council services when they lobby the special Cabinet Meeting (Civic Centre, February 10, from 4pm).

This meeting will decide where the axe will fall - whose jobs are at risk, what services will be reduced, privatised or even axed altogether - as they decide which cuts to propose to the full Council budget-setting meeting on February 24.

Swansea Labour councillors, like their colleagues across the country, seem to see their role as parcelling out Con-Dem cuts. TUSC thinks we need representatives who will fight Tory cuts not implement them.

We will be holding a ballot in Swansea this Saturday, 1.30pm, in Oxford Street, to ask the people of Swansea if they agree that our representatives should fight cuts not make them.

We encourage everybody who's worried that a service they hold dear is under threat - library, school breakfast club, Plantasia, playing fields, West Glamorgan Youth Theatre, etc - to also come along on February 10 and on February 24 demand councillors reconsider. Ask councillors to do what they were elected for to defend jobs and stand up for services.

Sunday, 1 February 2015

Protesters stood for hours outside Cardiff's City Hall as snow gusted about them, but it was the Councillors, arriving for the last full council meeting before the budget is set in February, who got the frostiest reception.

TUSC supporters joined Cardiff Against The Cuts and a host of other campaigners, including from Howardian Youth Music Centre, Community Action for Rumney Library, Save Channel View Leisure and others.

Library campaigners from Rumney were amongst the angriest. Despite local councillor Jacqui Parry promising "Rumney Libray would close over my dead body," both Rumney councillors voted against motions that would have scrapped the library closures this year.

Labour councillors have correctly pointed out that Tory Councillor and prospective parliamentary candidate for Cardiff North, Craig Williams, who proposed the motion, could hardly have been relied upon to defend council services from cuts if his party was in power in Cardiff. But if Labour councillors couldn't bring themselves to vote for a Tory motion they could have proposed their own, or backed the motion from Rhiwbina Independents. Labour has completely failed to demonstrate that there are any meaningful differences between them and either the Tories in government or the previous Liberal and Plaid Cymru coalition.

There is no opposition to the cuts demanded by the Tories and Liberals in Westminster from either the Labour-run Welsh Assembly or the Labour-run Council in Cardiff. Cardiff Council has obediently cut £83 million worth of jobs and services, but by 2017 they want to more than double that figure, adding another £125 million more cuts. This year's budget plans as they stand include the privatisation of all leisure services, ending meals on wheels for most people who currently have them, closing all day centres for the elderly, sacking more social workers (when the previous Liberal/Plaid Council and the current Labour Council have between them already cut a quarter of all social services staff in the last five years) and increasing the workload for those who remain, closing of seven libraries if volunteers can't be found to replace the paid workers and the further gutting of Cardiff Central Library. Another £5.7 million will be cut from out of a workforce which Unison says has already lost 18% of their real pay in the last four years.

What's the alternative? TUSC councillors would propose a needs budget - setting the funding at the level determined by what is necessary to fund the services we need, not by what the government thinks it can get away with fiving. TUSC councillors would be campaigning councillors, fighting for the funding we require to save jobs and services. Cardiff Council doesn't have to cut services back when the government demands it. They're sitting on a cash pile of reserves that is £41 million high, and they have powers to borrow £million more. They should use that cash to plug the gap between what the government has given us this year and what need to save all services, and spend the year building a campaign for more funding, calling for and link up with similar campaigns in the rest of Wales and Britain.

TUSC fully supports all the campaigners who are fighting to keep their communities together by trying to save the facilities and services those communities they rely on. We'll be outside City for the BIG ONE - the budget protest called by Cardiff Against the Cuts on Thursday 26th February at 330pm. You should be there too!